9 John Marino has created a system, DPorts, that uses the FreeBSD ports system to build ports for DragonFly, and uses [pkgng](https://github.com/pkgng/pkgng#readme) to manage the binary packages produced from those ports.

11 The default packaging system on DragonFly is pkgsrc. To use DPorts, you must remove or disable pkgsrc packages. Pkgsrc and DPorts cannot be used at the same time, or have packages mixed together. See the [DPorts Howto page](/docs/howtos/HowToDPorts/) for details on installing and using DPorts. Note: this is the first release with DPorts, and this is still experimental.

17 The process of testing [poudriere](https://fossil.etoilebsd.net/poudriere/doc/trunk/doc/index.wiki), a tool for mass-producing binary dports packages, exposed stability issues when repeatedly mounting and unmounting many tmpfs systems on large multicore (48) systems. These issues have been fixed. In addition to stability, several changes were made to improve performance in situations with heavy processor and disk usage.

19 Improvements in [poudriere performance, tmpfs performance](http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/kernel/2013-April/031224.html), and [CPU usage](http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/kernel/2013-April/031227.html) (graphs are linked in those message) were graphed by Francois Tigeot and posted on the kernel@dragonflybsd.org mailing list.

23 The two base compilers have swapped roles. GCC 4.7, introduced as an alternative compiler with Release 3.2, is now the primary compiler used to build DragonFly. GCC 4.4 remains on the system and still has an important role as the primary DPorts compiler. GCC 4.7 brings [OpenMP](http://http://openmp.org/) (parallel programming) support to DragonFly via libgomp as well as stack smashing protection via libssp, neither of which was supported by GCC 4.4. The newer compiler also offers improved C++ and Objective-C support, and introduces [Link-Time Optimization](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-time_optimization) (LTO) support.

27 [USB4BSD](http://www.selasky.org/hans_petter/usb4bsd/) is available this release, though not by default. More USB devices are compatible with DragonFly, and xhci (USB 3.0) users may be able to take full advantage of their newer hardware. Since this is a new feature, it is available in 3.4 but *not* built by default. See the [original announcement](http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/users/2012-October/017542.html) for how to do so. This feature was available in DragonFly 3.2 but is still experimental.

36 The release ISO images should be available on most of the [[mirrors|mirrors]]. If the ISO is not available on a certain mirror, please try another one or download it from the DragonFly master site. Each image is in the "Live CD" format, meaning that it boots into a running and fully functional DragonFly system, which can be used for testing or system recovery tasks as well as installation. Check the [hardware page](http://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/supportedhardware/) or boot a Live CD to check for compatibility.

69 We supply a Makefile in `/usr` to track the pkgsrc tree and we supply a Git mirror of the NetBSD pkgsrc CVS repo at `git://git.dragonflybsd.org/pkgsrcv2.git`. We recommend that users use it, instead of pulling from NetBSD with CVS. Our Git mirror is updated several times a day. Type 'make' in /usr to see the available commands for performing these actions.

73 **Disk size warning** - Installations using HAMMER should use disks over 50G in size. HAMMER history will consume disk space quickly. Either use UFS on smaller disks, or prune your file history carefully.

75 **Virtual PC users** - Virtual PC does not supply serial numbers for the virtual disks. The system may need to be manually directed in the boot loader if the disk identifier changes. (Hit ? in the boot loader for a list of available volumes.)

77 **Qemu users** - If you see a large number of error messages on the console when booting, you may need to boot DragonFly with ACPI disabled. This can be done in the menu presented at initial boot. If that doesn't help, try placing hw.ioapic_enable=0 in /boot/loader.conf.

79 **Installer Crypt Options** - The installer can encrypt the root volume and the swap volume. It will not work properly for other volumes despite any additional check-boxes you might see. Installer and boot-time support works but is still a bit rough around the edges. Performance will be relatively high on multi-core machines.

83 For a list of per-commit changes, see the [3.4.0rc tag commit](http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/commits/2013-April/129831.html) and the [3.4.1 tag commit](http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/pipermail/commits/2013-April/129946.html).